1.THE TESTS HAVE NEVER BEEN VALIDATED. It is out of the norm for tests to be given to children that never have been validated in a formal, scientific, peer-reviewed way. Professor Tienken of Seton Hall University calls this “dataless decision making“. What does it mean to a mom or dad to hear that no validity report has ever been issued for the SAGE/Common Core tests? It means that the test is as likely to harm as to help any child.

2. THE STANDARDS (upon which the test is based) HAVE NEVER BEEN VALIDATED. Building a test on the sandy foundation of unvalidated standards –hoping but not having actual evidence on which to base that hope– that the standards are unquestionably legitimate, means that not only the test but the teaching that leads up to it, is experimental, not time-tested. The SAGE evaluates teachers and even grades schools (and will close them) based on test scores from this flawed-upon-flawed (not to mention unrepresentative/unconstitutional) system. Dr. Tienken reminds us that that making policy decisions in this baseless way is “educational malpractice.”

4. THE TESTS ARE SECRETIVE. Parents and teachers may not see test questions, not even years after the test is over. Last year’s leaked screen shots of the test, taken by a student with her cell phone to show her mother, revealed an unpleasing agenda that asked students to question the value of reading (versus playing video games). The student who took the photos was told that she was a cheater, was threatened with expulsion; and the teacher who didn’t notice (or stop) the cell phone photography was threatened with job loss. Members of Utah’s 15-parent SAGE review committee have expressed grave concerns about the quality and content of SAGE, citing “grammar, typos, content, wrong answers, glitches, etc.,” but were never shown whether corrections were made to SAGE, prior to its hasty rollout.

5. TEST ITEM CREATION IS QUESTIONABLE. SAGE questions were written by two groups: a few hand picked Utah educators, and the psychometricians at the testing company, American Institutes for Research (AIR) which is not an academic organization but a behavioral research group. We don’t know why psychometricians were entrusted to write math and English questions. And we don’t know what the percentages are– how many SAGE questions come from educators, and how many from AIR’s psychometricians?

6.THE TEST DISREGARDS ETHICS CODES FOR BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH TESTING. As Dr. Gary Thompson has pointed out, behavioral tests are normally governed by strict codes of ethics and test-giving psychologists lose their licenses to practice if they veer from the codes of ethics.

The Utah State Office of Education claims tests do not collect psychological information, but it seems unreasonable to believe the claim.

Consider:

“Behavioral Indicators” is a phrase that’s been in Utah laws concerning student testing for years. It’s old news. Happily, last month, Sen. Aaron Osmond wrote a bill to remove that language. (Thank you, Senator Osmond.) Time will tell if the new law is respected or enforced.

“Psychometric census” of Utah students was part of the agreement Utah made with the federal government when it applied for and received a grant to build a longitudinal database to federal specifications, (including federal and international interoperability specifications.) Utah promised in that grant contract to use its Student Strengths Inventory to collect noncognitive data.

The test company, AIR, is a behavioral research company that creates behavioral assessments as its primary mission and focus.

U.S. Dept of Education reports such as “Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perserverance” promote collection of students’ psychological and belief-based data via tests, encouraging schools to use biometric data collection devices. I have not seen any of these devices being used in Utah schools, but neither have I seen any evidence that the legislature or our State School Board stand opposed to the Dept. of Education’s report or the advice it gives.

The NCES, a federal agency, has a National Data Collection Model which it invites states to follow. Since Utah has no proper legal privacy protections in place, there is nothing stopping us from accepting the invitation to comply with the Model’s suggestions, which include hundreds of data points including intimate and even belief-based points: religious affiliation, nickname, voting status, bus stop times, birthdate, nonschool activities, etc.

8.SAGE TESTS ARE GIVEN ALL YEAR LONG. These are not just end-of-year tests anymore. SAGE tests are summative, formative, interim, and practice (assignment based) tests. The summative (ending) test is given so early in the year that content has not been taught yet. But it gets tested anyway, and teachers/students/schools get negatively judged, anyway.

9. OPTING OUT IS ONE WAY TO PROTEST DATA MINING AND TO MINIMIZE IT. The State Longitudinal Database System (SLDS) collects daily data on every school child without ever asking for parental consent. SLDS collects much more than test-gathered data. The government of Utah will not allow an SLDS opt out. And since SLDS does not have an opt out provision (while SAGE does) it makes sense to minimize the amount of data mining that’s being done on your child by not taking these tests.

10.OPTING OUT OF SAGE FIGHTS EDUCATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. The lack of transparency, of fairness, of any shared amendment process or true representation under Common Core and its testing system defies “consent of the governed,” a principle we learned in the Declaration of Independence. “It is the right [and responsibility] of the people to alter or abolish” governments [or educational programs] destructive of life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness –or those that govern without the knowledge of, or consent of, the governed.

I believe that parents now have the right and responsibility to abolish SAGE testing, by refusing to participate.

If you haven’t yet realized that the Utah State Office of Education acts as an unaccountable bully to both the State School Board and to parents/teachers/legislators, please watch this; it is yet more reason to not allow your child to take the SAGE/AIR test, which is a science test as well as English and math:

Beware of Stealth Assessment as SAGE replacement

Please beware, however: The testing opt out movement has grown so huge (outside Utah) that some Utah legislators have decided to hop on the anti-testing bandwagon with an eye toward replacing SAGE with something from which public school parents can never, ever opt out (unless they home school or use private school). That’s called embedded testing, or stealth assessment.

We’ve pulled together this special edition of our usually-weekly newsclips because of three huge stories that broke in the past several days.

– In New York, more than 173,000 students opted out of the first wave of state testing, at least tripling last year’s boycott level.

– In five states (Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada and North Dakota) computerized Common Core testing systems collapsed in a replay of the widespread technical problems which plagued Florida exams earlier this spring.

Both major developments further undermine the credibility of judgements about students, teachers and schools made on the basis of standardized exam results.

— And, in Washington DC, the U.S. Senate education committee responded to grassroots pressure for assessment reform by endorsing an overhaul of “No Child Left Behind,” which eliminates most federal sanctions for test scores. The bill does not go far enough to reversing test misuse and overuse, but it is a step in the right direction

Remember that these updates are posted online at: http://fairtest.org/news/other for your reference and for use in Facebook posts, Tweets, weblinks, etc.

My school board is not even CONSIDERING any opposition research to CC and testing (and data mining that happens therein); what do I do as one person? I am pretty sure (have heard from several faculty & staff) that our superintendent told them not to let parents know they can opt out of the testing.

I just received an e-mail from my son’s teacher telling me she wants him to take it “If he decides to opt out (i’ve already sent paperwork), he will receive a score of zero on the various tests (rather than excusing him from the score). This will affect my total scores as well as the school’s scores. Each test will only take about an hour out of our class time. I think that whatever score xxx gets will add to our class total and help bring our average up!”

While I agree with many of your points, you are incorrect in a few areas. First off, test questions are secret because they are used every year for the obvious reason that it would be very expensive to rewrite it. If you want to see the rejected questions, the ones that are not being used can be found in the summative test bank. But no, active questions that are still being used on the test are not going to be made public. Assuming that they should be is ludicrous. The other point you are incorrect on is how the test was written . Any teacher in the state of Utah was invited to write for the test. All teachers were also invited to participate in test review and any test questions with errors was corrected prior to it appearing on the test.
What I do fully agree with you on is that the way the test is being used is unfair to students and teachers. I do not like that the test is being used to penalize schools with high populations of SPED and ESL students and the fact that the legislature seems to believe that a test could indicate the effectiveness of a teacher. No test can do that. That is the problem. So, if you going to fight the good fight, please focus on this real issue rather than attacking the work of hundreds of Utah teachers. The test isn’t the problem, the way it is being used is.